Battles

2004

 

For a fairly straightforward character, he created an awful lot of confusion. Disaster seemed to follow in his wake, and he blazed an unconscious trail of destruction. He didn’t mean it, of course, and though it would be a grave misjudgment to call him a ‘good’ person, he certainly wasn’t a bad one. On inspection, one tended to find in him those kinds of qualities in a person which are usually considered fledgling; destined to grow and take on a form more refined, qualities that had the potential to be transformed into something significant, something that might eventually make up a person of depth and integrity.

 

But, for one reason or another, they had not grown, and he remained stunted and childlike. It was not that he was unaware of his flaws; rather curiously, he gave them too much importance. He pondered his mistakes and his faults with the projected knowledge that the effect they had on others was great, and he accepted this with a kind of indulgent defeatism that crossed self-importance with self-hatred. Yet, conversely, he rarely looked inward and he did nothing to try and change or better himself.

 

The café had become his recluse. He went there for hours and did not think about much. He read, mainly, which helped him maintain his own illusion, but he read without curiosity or wonder. He read to avoid his thoughts, not to deepen them. Escapism ran through his veins.

 

On this particular winter Monday, the air outside was thick with water and the skies were the colour of charcoal, and James waited for Olivia without a book. A conversation nearby filtered in and out of earshot.

 

‘The problem with the modern age is that we’ve become so obsessed with the concept of happiness, it has ceased to become any kind of concept at all. It’s meaningless. It’s hollow.’ A murmur of agreement. The man continued, he was wearing a grey scarf that he didn’t wrap around his neck; ‘And of course, as soon as an emotion ceases to be something we can conceptualise, it ceases to really exist.’  Another murmur of approval. James frowned.

 

There are three kinds of people: there are people who think that every conversation with lofty aspirations is necessarily intellectual; there are people who can decipher the subtle and sometimes intangible difference between pretence and authenticity; and there are people who paint a stroke of cynicism on all such conversations, a habit rather than an insight. James, unfortunately, was the first kind of person. And although the conversation nearby teetered on the edge of the ridiculous, he was desperate to understand what the man in the scarf was saying.

 

‘Happiness is like an orgasm. If you think about it too much it goes away.’ Laughter now from the table. They might as well give this man a standing ovation. The orator caught James’ eye and James felt himself go red. He had a pale complexion that showed emotion too easily - not ideal for someone as stoic as himself. Not ideal for what he was about to say to Olivia either.

 

She entered, breezily and clumsily, hair askew and a pair of red earphones dangling from her coat pocket. There were a few seconds when she hadn’t yet spotted James and he could look at her as he wished he always could. These moments let him absorb her presence without embarrassment, or fear, or vulnerability, as though he was watching her on a television screen. Too quickly she spotted him. And she made him nervous, though she did not know it. She could never know it. She ordered a coffee and they spoke for a long time; they never really ran out of things to talk about. She told him an anecdote about a pair of greyhound dogs who had run away from their owner in broad daylight a few hours earlier. Olivia had started to chase after them, but thought better of it. ‘Do you realise how fast greyhounds are?’  He told her about an awful family lunch he had attended the day before, ‘Are you in your final year at university, dear?’ Countless great-aunts asked.  They laughed a lot.

 

‘Anyway’ she shuffled in her seat, distracted, wanting to leave. ‘Did you say you had something to talk to me about?’

 

‘Yes, yes. Yes.’ He could tell today probably wasn’t the right day, she was indifferent towards him today; he was a piece of furniture in her life, and not much more. He found himself wondering if she had met someone. He would never ask her.

 

‘Go on, then. Don’t leave me hanging!’ Her tone was jokey and playful, she was in a good mood and she didn’t care much for him, and why should she? How could she possibly feel anything other than indifference towards him?

 

His eyes wandered to the man-in-the-scarf and his entourage again. Someone else in the group was talking now, a young, pretty-ish woman. She was gesticulating wildly and the others were nodding along wide-eyed. Were those people true to themselves? They probably wrote poetry, he thought, they probably spoke about their feelings with ease. He burned up again. But he told Olivia because he had to, and because that was what she deserved, and for all his faults, he knew what Olivia deserved. She reacted much as he expected her to; - something along the lines of the five stages of grief. He’d burst her happy mood with a knife-edge and he had caused her distress, not for the first time and not for the last. He despised himself at that moment.

 

He suddenly noticed that she was crying. Her face was crumpled, her hair even messier and her nose was runny. She wasn’t just crying, she was sobbing, hyperventilating and choking back tears that were making her cheeks wet. She buried her face into her jumper. James felt a wave of panic and repulsion: this wasn’t fair. She wasn’t allowed to make him feel so bad. He was angry now.

 

“For god’s sake,” he mumbled. “Olivia come on, pull it together. We’re in a café.”

 

As the words left his mouth he knew what he had done, and he watched numbly as she collected her coat and bag and hurried out the café, wiping her eyes furiously. She hadn’t even bothered to retaliate. She expected that of him now, the insensitivity, the empathy deficit. He expected it of himself too. His bones ached. Some part of him longed to chase her down the street - it was raining now, it would be like a scene in a film. But the other part of him, the part he knew better, cut it off. And he stayed, half-empty, half-stifled, sipping his cappuccino.

 

1998

 

James and Olivia had met as 22-year-olds, in an accidentally clichéd circumstance, that left both of them too embarrassed to recall it much, even years later. They were English in that way.

She had been sitting on a park bench on a warm day in May, hair in a bun and face screwed up in concentration at the George Orwell essay she was reading. He had come over and sat beside her, boldly, she thought, and started asking her about the essay. The funny thing about all of this was that a few days later neither of them could even remember which Orwell essay she had been reading.

‘It was Why I Write, I promise you.’

‘No, it wasn’t. I read that last year and that definitely wasn’t it. I’m sure it was Shooting an Elephant.’

‘No, because we spoke about England a lot and that’s from Why I Write.’

 ‘James! The point is Orwell talks about England in all of his essays.’

They had left the park together, and wandered into a pub. James seemed assertive, and she liked that.  He was the kind of person that ordered his drink with a clear voice and lots of eye contact. They struggled a little at first to find a harmony in conversation, because they both liked to lead. He came back from ordering them a second round. He sat down, and then she said, ‘So, how long did you say it was that you’ve been at your job?’

 I " God " I don’t even know. I suppose just over a year " yeah, that’s about right. What about you?’

She smiled shyly and looked down at her glass. ‘I was trying to catch you out. You haven’t even told me what you do yet.’

James reddened. He wasn’t used to being caught out. He felt silly for asking her too many questions and for not reciprocating her openness. He was working in TV production, he told her, it was okay. Not the best, not the worst. You know how it is.

 

Olivia nodded, yes, she did. She still didn’t know what to do with her life, what was she good at? She couldn’t help thinking the whole career thing was a bit of a sham, something to distract the masses from the ultimate futility of existence.

James laughed, “The opium of the people in a post-religious age?”

“Something like that.”

 

She looked down at her drink, pushing the ice cubes around with a straw. Then she looked up and smiled at him, some sort of smile which made all the inordinate descriptions of how a smile can light up a room seem suddenly real. And so he leaned over and kissed her.

*****

Olivia had grown up reading the Harry Potter books, and she spent much of the early relationship berating James for having not. “I just don’t know where your moral compass as a child would have come from!” Always followed by: “I didn’t have one, Liv.” She found him intriguing, above anything else, a part alien who she longed to know better but could never quite understand. He just thought she was wonderful. They went on holidays together, and they got to know each other’s families. They talked about the future with the meandering naivety that comes with a fresh relationship, but they didn’t dwell much on the days ahead because they were in love with the present. 

 

About four months into their relationship, they went on a weekend trip to the countryside. Friends of Olivia’s parents owned a house in Suffolk and they rented it out when they could, but it was a drab and rainy November and there wasn’t much business, so they let Olivia have it for free. It was their first trip outside of the city together and they were excited. Neither could drive, so they took the train on Friday afternoon from Liverpool Street Station. They bought sandwiches and cans of beer and milled excitedly around the platform, laughing loudly and talking hurriedly.

 

“Do you think that the best works of fiction have to be timeless?”

Olivia had a habit of springing these questions upon James; he had not met anyone so able to totally detach themselves from their environment at the drop of a hat. He envied her for this. She never relied on the external world for fulfilment. 

“Hmm, no. I mean definitely not. Sometimes books are representative of a time.”

“What, and that’s their only value?”

“Well, yeah. What about " I don’t know " “

His literary knowledge failed him here and they both knew it. Olivia grinned and punched him playfully in the arm. She liked observing James’ reactions to her probes; he would generally respond with intrigue and admiration, or else a mild irritation and a sulky silence.

James scuffed the ground with his feet. What did she expect him to say? Why did she ask questions that could never have satisfying answers, questions that only raised more questions? And did she know that when she asked those questions her forehead screwed up and became wrinkly and she chewed her lip and she didn’t look all that nice?

They were still waiting for their train, but another train - bound for Norwich - had been stationary for a few minutes on the platform behind them. From the platform entrance, a tall man began to sprint; he had a heavy-looking canvas bag strapped roughly over his shoulder. Olivia continued waiting for James’s answer, she was frustrated at his refusal to engage and she felt her face begin to flush with irritation. He was looking at his phone now, and her heart began to beat fast. Tears started to prick her like stinging nettles and soon she began to sting all over, her body was prickling all over she felt trapped in it, frozen as a mannequin. And then, like a mannequin, she fell to the ground with full force and weight. She lay helpless and hurting on the concrete.

James looked up from his phone for a moment, registering the destination of the running man, and when he turned back to Olivia a split second later, she was a crumpled heap on the floor. Her face was pale and her dark eyes were wide with shock.

“Liv!” He yelped squatting down to her level and grabbing her by the shoulders, “are you ok? What happened?”

Olivia pointed at her knee, which was exposed now through a rip in her tights and covered in blood.

“Yes but " what happened?” The whistle for Leeds-bound train sounded behind them.

 “That train; that man was running for it.”

“And he knocked you over?”

“Yes, but, it was really hard. A really hard knock.” She was shaking a little; he had not seen her look this fragile.  He helped her to her feet. Was she seriously hurt? No, though there were bruises. Did she need to go the hospital? No, no.

Olivia was subdued and morose for the train journey. She sipped her gin and tonic delicately and stared out the window, she forced weak laughs at James’ attempts to cheer her up, but she felt strange and violated, and unable to have fun. James quickly grew restless at her prolonged reaction the incident.  He was bored " he wanted normal Olivia back, the Olivia that asked questions about the transcendence of novels. She cheered up when they got to the cottage and settled into the weekend, but she still wasn’t quite herself.

On Sunday, she burnt herself on the cooker and burst into tears. It wasn’t a particularly bad burn, but it was painful. She looked out of the window and she saw that the sky was crying with her and the horses were looking on with sympathy and that was how she knew that James had left the room.

 2003 - Spring

 

‘And you have packed those photographs?”

“Yes.’

James’ tone was flippant; he stood over the kitchen counter holding a mug full of hot liquid in his left hand and perusing the internet with his right. His mother hovered anxiously behind him, but he couldn’t tell whether she was anxious about him spilling the contents of the mug on the laptop, or about the phase of his life he was about to embark on. She probably couldn’t tell either. Anxiety was often like that. And now, whatever it she was anxious about, had slithered into the family photographs and was poisoning everyone in them.

James was going to fight in Iraq, and that was most likely what was making his mother anxious.

He laid his mug down on the surface and turned round and hugged her. She clung to him. It was one of those rare and tender instances where the expectation of the weight of feeling doesn’t cloud the moment.

‘Here he is, our soldier.’  Loud and tall, his father strolled into the room. He was broad and had the kind of build that continued to benefit from being formerly muscular, despite a vague beer belly and a total oblivion to what size jeans he should buy. He was one of those people who had worked out early on how to adapt his personality to his appearance and had done so uncompromisingly. James looked up to him as much as he was damaged by him. In this sense they upheld the most steadfast father-son relationship.

The embrace was broken up swiftly and attention was turned. His father cracked a smile before he handed James the morning’s paper. “You might be interested to read a couple of things in there, get a sense of what you’re getting yourself into.” He wandered over to the kettle as he spoke, absent-mindedly, flicking the switch to boil the water. 

The articles were scathing, the paper words seeped with distrust and every sentence was a wall designed to keep James out. He tossed it aside. “Dad,” he said firmly, “I don’t think this is going to help me!” His father laughed brazenly, “Who said anything about help? Although help might be what you need when you get there.” His mother shook her head warningly and moved to put her arm around James. “Olivia phoned”, she told him, “she’s coming for dinner later.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I’m going to cook some chicken, roast it, the way you two used to like. And I bought that bottle of red you two used to like too.”

James pulled away, irritated, “Olivia doesn’t even really drink red very much.”

“Oh well, I thought "“

“Yes, yes, fine. Whatever. I’m going to lie down for a bit.”

Climbing the stairs, James traced over the events of the past weeks. When he had been told he was going to Iraq, he’d been surprised at his own reaction. He had felt calm, unmoved, there was neither excitement nor dread and he boxed it somewhere in the ‘fate’ department of his mind. Besides, what else was he going to do? He had left London long ago; he no longer belonged there. Olivia was the only notable force in his life, and that was no good anymore.

*****

James must have drifted off because when he woke up it was 7pm and Olivia had arrived. He could hear rowdy chatter and the clinking of glasses downstairs. His mother and Olivia laughing, his father saying something inaudible. Groggy and excited, he changed his shirt and sprayed on some aftershave.

As he descended the stairs, he saw Olivia as if for the first time. He saw her smile that was like a smattering of sunshine, and her eyes that were irresistible because they seemed to know what you wanted them to do before you did. She could mirror sadness in a way that didn’t add to it but quelled it. Every time she moved a part of her body she was trying to know the world better, edging her way into things that others might see as useless voids. She wrote nothing off, her humanity always prevailed. James gazed at her intensely, because he knew that he might lose her, and he wanted to remember what it felt like to have her.

 

 

2003 - Summer

 

 

There weren’t many instances in her life that caused Olivia as much pain as watching James go to war. She was sad for him because she feared it meant only one thing: James had given up on himself. He was tired of trying, and what becomes of us when we are tired of trying? 

 

The morning she had said goodbye to him had been almost unbearable in its poignancy for she knew she was saying goodbye to him as she had known him, as he was. The sadder fact was that he hadn’t grasped the magnitude of the change he was about to inflict on himself, and more disturbing still, he seemed to have embraced this chapter as part of his life’s natural trajectory  

 

As summer hit the city, Olivia wondered, amongst the hot trappings and the smell of smoky grass, whether it was she who had been wrong all along. She was aware " vaguely " of the undue faith she was prone to placing in people, and she had felt consequences before, but never consequences so real that it had crushed her spirit. Besides, when events in life occur that are apt to cause us to question the way we have chosen to live, we tend to find ways around them.

 

She found herself traversing her mind for memories that might have " should have " given her a clue; there was the time that James had left her alone all evening, when she was sick, because he wanted to go to a party that, incidentally, his ex-girlfriend was at. They’d had a huge row that night " he hadn’t understood. There was the time she’d been telling him about her great grandmother, a figure of such importance in her early life; Olivia was chopping vegetables, so she wasn’t looking at James while she talked. When she turned around, she was startled by the expression on his face; it wasn’t quite boredom " for boredom he would have had to have been listening. No, it was more like indifference, total and pure. And then there was the phone-call, the 3am phone-call. She had been despairing, one of those moods where " as her mother put it " ‘you can’t see the woods from the trees.’ Olivia had tried to call her father, but he didn’t answer. She had been gripped by a wave of panic so intense, so all-consuming, that she genuinely hadn’t known what do to. James was on holiday and it wasn’t that long into their relationship. Calling him was nothing if not a last resort.

 

These musings, acute and painful as they were in their moments, did not prevent Olivia from living life in her spirited way. It was June: the sun shone most days and there were parties and prosecco, friends and potential boyfriends. She hadn’t been in love with James for a very long time. There had been too many disappointments and she wanted to live vivaciously. She’d grown tired of the dull aches and the numbing of joy, her heart sinking and fighting frustration as she stamped out her own pain in order to try and understand his. Probably he still loved her, but that didn’t matter much now.

 

 

Liv,

 

I suppose I could email you, but internet actually isn’t that easy to find. And plus -I’m at war, so I feel like I should do some kind of justice to the romance of that by writing you a letter.

 

It’s ok here, really. I know you’ll disapprove, but I feel more myself here than I have in a long time. I miss everyone, you included of course! But the people here are interesting, and good company. I might have even made some friends for life.

 

I won’t talk about the war itself, because I know you don’t believe in it.  How are you? Has the job got better? You are still there aren’t you? I’m back for a visit in September, will be great to catch up then.

Lots of love

 

James

 

 

Olivia read the letter three times to make sure: James hadn’t made a single spelling mistake, there wasn’t even a misplaced comma. She raised her eyebrows; it was very unlike James. Suspiciously unlike James. She replied a few days later, trying her hardest to convey a tone of detached but dutiful care, recording the surface of her life only. Her heart had sunk when she had read that he would be back in September but it was easy to pretend otherwise in a letter. For the first time she really realised the complexity of communicating through technology; the weight of subtext in all the variables of reply-speed and methods. It was easy to communicate with a letter because you had time to think and time to pretend. James was wrong, she found herself thinking; it wasn’t romantic, it was contrived.

 

2004

It was a colder day when Olivia ran into James’ mother in the pharmacy. It had been drizzling earlier too but that wasn’t unusual for April. The sky wasn’t cloudy exactly, but it had a kind of dull tone to it - she thought afterwards that it looked a bit like it was covered in cling film, and then she thought it was strange that she had noticed such a detail because she didn’t usually notice much upwards of whatever was in her eye-line. James’ mother was quite distinctly in her eye-line when she opened the shop door- and a good thing too, because it meant she didn’t have any time to consider turning around. Olivia liked James’s mother, but she fretted too much, and she placed too much emphasis on Olivia " even now " and Olivia really wasn’t in the mood. James was as far back in her mind as he ever got.

 

‘Liv! Hello!’ Her facial expression didn’t match her tone. She looked tired and drawn, her eyes had very little sparkle and the wrinkles in her face seemed more prominent than usual.

 

‘Hi Caroline. How are you?’

 

Caroline recoiled a little at the question, to Olivia’s surprise. She was usually the queen of small talk. She smiled weakly. ‘Well, what a question, how am I coping without my son eh? I don’t know, looking forward to him coming back.’

 

She nodded impatiently, ‘yes, yes. I imagine he’ll relish some home-cooking! Can’t imagine the foods much good in the army. Just lots of carbs!’

 

Olivia daydreamed throughout the rest of what resembled a conversation, before a sudden change in tone pulled her back to the present.

 

‘Liv, will you come for a drink with me?’

 

Olivia was taken aback, not so much by the request, as by the way Caroline said it. It wasn’t a friendly invitation - it was a cry for help. She agreed, because really, what else could she do?

 

They walked out in silence, onto the bustling high street. Double decker buses sailed past and children in Nike trainers sauntered through the street as though it was a promenade.  On the other side of the road a man was shouting after his teenage daughter " Sarah " who had evidently just stormed off. He was holding two shopping bags and wearing a scruffy navy blue shirt. She was walking quite determinedly away from him, hair in a high ponytail, jeans too tight, no bag. Caroline and Olivia walked instinctively to the pub they had all been to many times before, still they did not speak. Olivia hovered by the bar but Caroline shooed her to find a seat- ‘Ill get this. Wine?’

Caroline returned to the table with two glasses and a bottle of red. She poured clumsily and filled the glasses almost to the rim, and then looked at Olivia with an expression that combined sadness and embarrassment.

 

******

 

In the end it had been James that told her, in a café, on a grey and rainy day. Caroline had decided rather abruptly that it wasn’t her place, that it wouldn’t be fair to James. After Olivia found out she thought the idea of being fair to James was perversely funny.

 

Olivia had read about the report of course, the allegations which were apt to shock theoretically and from afar became instantaneously intimate. The Independent had described it as “a devastating 250-page dossier, detailing allegations of beatings, electrocution, mock executions and sexual assault,” it went on:

“The damning dossier draws on cases of more than 400 Iraqis, representing "thousands of allegations of mistreatment amounting to war crimes of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

*****

 

Some people are moral people and they live their lives consciously and deliberately; nurturing instincts, interrogating thoughts. The fear of failure for a moral person is not a fear that can ever be quelled, because of the many shades of wrong, and because of the banality of evil, and the ambiguity of good.  And perhaps the only thing that distinguishes integrity from arbitrariness is an internal life that is so impossible to decipher in another that judgements on good and bad, on moral and immoral, are redundant. One day, sitting across the table from someone you love, a realisation hits like a thousand pinpricks. You know then that you cannot possibly love this person because they are moral. Perhaps you love them because they do things that seem moral, or use moral language, but they are not moral " at least you cannot know that they are moral. And you’ll wonder why you do love them, and then you’ll understand how inconsequential morality is.

The problem, in the end, is how profoundly subjective everything really is. Olivia should have known better, the signs had been there and really, it wasn’t a surprise. It was a defeat though, and she felt intensely unhappy. When you give something your all, how are you supposed to accept failure? 

She wondered if any other feeling could ever match the totality of disappointment. The way it seeps into every corner, deadening in its effect, hard and uncompromising, the emotional equivalent to an unpleasant anaesthetic, she thought.

Olivia waited on the platform for the Victoria line southbound. There was two minutes to go. She saw a man standing at the top of the platform, dressed strangely, acting restlessly. With a strength of conviction that she felt sure she had never experienced before, she knew that he was going to jump onto the tracks. In the moment that she realised, she swiveled on her heels and ran as fast as she could out of  the station, out into the blinkering sunshine, where a rainbow was visible.